The first annual Lambda LitFest Los Angeles is a celebration of contemporary voices honoring and expanding on the rich, diverse tradition of LGBTQ writers and readers in Southern California.

LitFest at large will run at satellite locations all week. Tonight I heard Los Angeles based writer, musician, filmmaker, and former porn actor Christopher Zeidschegg, aka Danny Wylde, read an excerpt from his book.

On Wednesday, Emmy-award winning writer Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) will be joined in conversation with film critics Dave White and Alonso Duralde while speaking about his epic career at an event in West Hollywood.

The main event, however, is LitFest Saturday on March 11 at Barnsdall Art Park — a full day of back-to-back panels with esteemed members of the LGBTQ literary community including Justin Torres (We the Animals) who lives in Los Angeles, where he is Assistant Professor of English at UCLA.

“Queer Truth: Nonfiction & Journalism in a Post Truth World” will bring together journalists and essayists to discuss the importance of telling our stories at a time when the very concepts of objectivity and truth in the media are under scrutiny.

Peter Paige (co-creator and executive producer of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed hit Freeform series The Fosters) will be joined by four other writers to discuss their approach to crafting queer characters in their work from novels to screenplays and everything in between.

Part of Lambda LitFest’s mission is to celebrate underrepresented authors born in L.A. To that end, Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park presents the best and brightest writers of Chicanx culture, defined as “a new, radical, decolonized, inclusive identity” (beyond Chicano/Chicana and Latino/Latina) “forged on the streets of L.A. for LGBTQ and non-binary familia.”